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There's no doubt that money can be made by owning shares of unprofitable businesses. For example, although software-as-a-service business Salesforce.com lost money for years while it grew recurring revenue, if you held shares since 2005, you'd have done very well indeed. Nonetheless, only a fool would ignore the risk that a loss making company burns through its cash too quickly.

Given this risk, we thought we'd take a look at whether Suncorp Technologies (HKG:1063) shareholders should be worried about its cash burn. In this article, we define cash burn as its annual (negative) free cash flow, which is the amount of money a company spends each year to fund its growth. Let's start with an examination of the business's cash, relative to its cash burn.

When Might Suncorp Technologies Run Out Of Money?

A company's cash runway is calculated by dividing its cash hoard by its cash burn. As at December 2019, Suncorp Technologies had cash of HK$76m and such minimal debt that we can ignore it for the purposes of this analysis. Importantly, its cash burn was HK$32m over the trailing twelve months. Therefore, from December 2019 it had 2.3 years of cash runway. That's decent, giving the company a couple years to develop its business. You can see how its cash balance has changed over time in the image below.

How Well Is Suncorp Technologies Growing?

Suncorp Technologies actually ramped up its cash burn by a whopping 67% in the last year, which shows it is boosting investment in the business. As if that's not bad enough, the operating revenue also dropped by 9.5%, making us very wary indeed. Taken together, we think these growth metrics are a little worrying. In reality, this article only makes a short study of the company's growth data. This graph of historic earnings and revenue shows how Suncorp Technologies is building its business over time.

How Hard Would It Be For Suncorp Technologies To Raise More Cash For Growth?

Even though it seems like Suncorp Technologies is developing its business nicely, we still like to consider how easily it could raise more money to accelerate growth. Generally speaking, a listed business can raise new cash through issuing shares or taking on debt. Commonly, a business will sell new shares in itself to raise cash to drive growth. By comparing a company's annual cash burn to its total market capitalisation, we can estimate roughly how many shares it would have to issue in order to run the company for another year (at the same burn rate).

Suncorp Technologies's cash burn of HK$32m is about 53% of its HK$61m market capitalisation. That's high expenditure relative to the value of the entire company, so if it does have to issue shares to fund more growth, that could end up really hurting shareholders returns (through significant dilution).

How Risky Is Suncorp Technologies's Cash Burn Situation?

On this analysis of Suncorp Technologies's cash burn, we think its cash runway was reassuring, while its cash burn relative to its market cap has us a bit worried. Summing up, we think the Suncorp Technologies's cash burn is a risk, based on the factors we mentioned in this article. Separately, we looked at different risks affecting the company and spotted 4 warning signs for Suncorp Technologies (of which 2 are a bit concerning!) you should know about.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.